Monday, June 12, 2006

"Last month, we learned that horrific sweatshops in Jordan were making garments for retailers like Wal-Mart. It turned out that the workers in those sweatshops were not Jordanian but had been flown in from lower-wage countries like Bangladesh and China. The sweatshops were in Jordan for only one reason: to earn duty-free entry to our market under the United States-Jordan trade deal. These sweatshops did nothing for the Jordanian people, nor for the Bangladeshi and Chinese workers, who were forced to work 20-hour shifts, were frequently beaten and cheated even out of their miserable wages. The only ones who benefited were the foreign sweatshop owners and United States retailers."